You Have Reached Fort Miller... and No One Has Died of Dysentery

Blog title explanation later.

As the previous post mentioned, we woke up this morning to the sound of rollerblades, dog, and child screaming. Couldn't have thought up a better way myself. Oh, and it was raining. Thankfully, it had just started by the time we got up, so we didn't get wet. Mostly.

During the drive back to I-70, our trusty Eisenhower Interstate System friend, we drove through the town of Liberty, IN. It is about 9:20 on a Sunday. We saw exactly 1 person. The rest, presumably, were either sleeping or in church...?

We drove about the hour-and-change to Indianapolis, arriving by about 11, to a somewhat creepily deserted town. Indianapolis, of Colts fame, looks JUST LIKE Columbus and Nashville: big wide streets, tall buildings, relatively light on the essential element (people). 

We parked and got out to explore. The first thing that caught our eyes was a giant, phallic tower in what appeared to be the middle of town. Predictably, we headed straight for it.

The tower was the Soldiers and Sailor's Monument, part of a Veterans Memorial Complex; more on this later. The tower had a bunch of inscriptions for the Civil and Spanish-American Wars, and an observation deck at the top. This is hilarious, because I want to go up and Conor is afraid of heights. We went up 321 stairs (whoo) and looked out over the city. Hilarity ensued, as a thoroughly uncomfortable Conor distracted himself with taking pictures.

We went to the other side of the observation deck and immediately realized that the National Mall in DC had been shrunken and rebuilt in downtown Indianapolis (below). Really. Check the Picasa album at the bottom. There was a Lincoln Memorial-esque building at one end, a big long quad, a Washington monument-like building in the middle, and instead of the Capitol was a weird, tall, building with columns and a pyramid on top. Like Giza, but strangely more out of place. 

 (This is NOT Washington DC)

The pyramid-column thingy:

It was not snowing when we were there, obviously.

PS: I pulled the pictures above from Google Images. Not mine.

The pyramid-thingy turned out to be the Indiana War Memorial, a monument and museum to all the Hoosiers who fought in America's wars over the year. After taking a few humorous pictures outside (we might have to wait until the end of the trip to post them as we took them on the Good Camera and not my phone, which is what the Picasa album at the end of this post links to), we went in to check out the museum.

The museum was in the basement/dungeon/scary deserted place of the tower, and featured exhibits from the American Revolution, War of 1812, Civil War, Spanish-American "War," World War I, II, Korea, Vietnam, Cold War (?), Desert Storm, Afghanistan, and Iraq. It also had mini-exhibits on "conflicts" like Bosnia. Weird. Basically, if an Indiana solider ever fired a gun in an engagement, this monument had an exhibit for it.

All joking aside, it was a pretty cool little museum. At this point, Conor and I are starving and to go find somewhere local to eat. We asked a older couple on the street where we could get local food. 

The response: "Jimmy John's is right over there!"

Conor: Anywhere that isn't a chain?

Lady: Panera is over there on the corner...

Conor: Thanks ma'am we'll be sure to check it out!

We found a neat little sub place called Penn Station Subs where we got a delicious meal. After grabbing coffee inside a Borders, we left town. As far as our goals were concerned:

• PQ: Indeterminate. There simply were not enough people around to make a semi-accurate judgment.
• Overly compliment someone: abject failure.
• Taste Local Beer: it was 10 am. Everything was closed and it was 10 AM. Give us a break.
• Take pictures with someone. Again, failure.

I really think that you need to give us a pass, though, because there was NO ONE AROUND. We saw a picture of what the tower-thingy looked like on a clear, sunny, non-Sunday - it was busy and awesome. We managed to arrive when the town was still asleep.

Anyway, we headed out of town around 12:45 and headed for St. Louis. We arrived around 445 (made good time, despite pouring rain) and met the Millers, Conor's family friends. And now, our friends! 

I think. We haven't made a mess yet.

The Millers (Steve, Vicky, Becky, Jake, and a sadly not-here Hallie) have been incredibly kind, opening their doors to us and being beyond nice, way beyond the usual. We are greatly indebted to them for their hospitality, an excellent dinner, and most importantly their relaxed and engaging company.

The blog title is a reference to their hospitality. Mr. Miller told us to raid the pantry before we left so we'd be stocked up before we tripped out to Kansas. Immediate flashback (for the video game nerd in me, at least): Oregon Trail, when you -blessedly- made it to a major fort and could stock up on supplies. St. Louis is our Fort Miller! Of course, it was always right after that that someone always died of dysentery. 

Remember now?

"You have died of dysentery." The dreaded words. I think we'll be all right. 

After a banquet of a dinner, Conor and I headed out to meet Kate Jennison, who recently graduated from UNC with me (tear) and is in St. Louis for the time being before ostensibly heading to Boston to join Apple. Great fun, but an early night as Kate is hopping on a plane at 5:30 tomorrow morning. Kate got us a bunch of song recommendations! Objective WIN. 

Speaking of tomorrow, Conor and I will spend some time in the city of St. Louis, potentially busking for the first time (!?!) before hitting up I-70 again. Goals for tomorrow: take a decent picture of a Jesus billboard, don't miss the photo of the Welcome to Kansas sign, and successfully find a place to camp. This will most likely be Kanopolis, but God only knows where that is. My GPS - named Rhonda, for the record - will hopefully take us there despite her rather obvious speech impediment (Rhonda is otherwise known as my phone). 

Pictures from the trip will be periodically uploaded both to twitter (follow me at nate_488) and my online Picasa album. You can find the public album for it here: http://picasaweb.google.com/nafriedm/RoadTrip. Hooray for cloud computing! At some point, we'll take the high-quality pictures off of Conor's camera and add them somehow. 

If the site doesn't work, shoot me an email. It's just easier than posting everything here.

Again, I'll keep posting the Picasa link as stuff gets updated, but keep this and Twitter open! I'll keep trying to post something every day, even if it isn't as long as something like this. 

Small victories from today:

• Conor discovered his cough drops after fearing all was lost
• I managed to take a picture of a road sign with mileage to St. Louis
• We showered
• We saw, and took pictures, of the World's Biggest Squirrel in a park in Indianapolis. I swear to God. This thing was a mutant. It was considering an attack when we left it alone.
• Someone commented on this thing. (Hint. HINT.)